Mastering the Brand Experience- It’s Possible With Streng

Understanding the difference between brand experience, experiential marketing, and event marketing is critical to mastering a strong and successful marketing plan for any brand. Mastering the brand experience is key to getting and keeping customers interested in your brand and the goods and services you are offering. Many business owners fail to recognize the importance of marketing for the brand experience and the way your customers look at and interact with your brand on a regular basis. Thanks to the advent of digital media and connections that permeate every aspect of our lives today, and with social and mobile media being dominant, with a good foundation in traditional media as well, there will always be a lot of overlap when it comes to your marketing plan and multiple tactics that will need to be considered. Marketing for brand experience is the ultimate goal but also includes other aspects that are just as vital for the brand experience your customers have. Here at Streng Agency, we have the skills, tools, and experience needed to make this work to your advantage!

Mastering the Brand Experience

There are many different types of activities that people do in both the physical and digital worlds that carry the makers of what we refer to as brand experiences. Some of these include corporate events, Guerilla marketing, employee/consumer interactions, customer use of an app or website, social media discussions, and face to face engagements. All of these various types of interactions offer the opportunity for a meaningful experience that can boost the customer’s view of the brand as a whole.

The most effective type of brand experiences are those that are designed to create specific, valuable interactions that meet the needs of customers and leaves them with a satisfied feeling after the experience is over. Done well, these interactions result in deeper emotional connections and greater brand affinity. No matter what the experience is, anytime you engage with customers you need to view it as a time to master the brand experience and wow them with what you have to offer!

Using Events to Your Advantage

Within the business marketing field, most define events as a specialized type of brand experience that is developed to meet unique and specific needs and that is targeted toward a more specified audience. These events include a range of gatherings such as business meetings, trade shows, specialized niche industry conferences, special events and conventions for people with shared interest, informational meetings that are open to the general public yet are focused a specific service or need.

Why are these events so critical to marketing for the brand experience? Many answers can be given to that question but the most common and important ones are:

To educate those at the event about new products, services, features, or items that are being offered by the business.

To provide participants with a unique opportunity to network with others in the field and to connect to other participants and the brand as a whole.

To bring into line and motivate the participants to support a cause or get behind a new strategy, service, or product the business is offering.

Most events offer a unique opportunity for interaction with a brand, its people, and the products or services they provide. As such, they are a valuable tool to build familiarity with the brand and the positive impact it has on society. Mastering the brand experience is critical for business success and once we understand the ins and outs of marketing for the brand experience we can fully maximize the opportunity to make your brand known and remembered by customers and potential customers.

Experiential Activations for Customers

We think of experiential activations as more consumer-oriented experiences, often promotional in nature and geared toward more general audiences. Examples would include branded stunts such as interactive trials of products, public unveiling, and beta testing, and other opportunities for potential customers to interact with and use the product before investing in it with a blind purchase. Why do marketers invest time and energy into experiential activations? Many reasons exist but these are some of the most critical:

To create an opportunity for customers and potential customers to connect with the company and interact with a brand or product on a more intimate level.

To associate one product with another product that has a strong reputation- sports team endorsements and celebrity commercials are examples of this.

To gain more attention by the local media and to connect on a social level in order to generate positive viral content that gets shared concerning their brand.

To create an opportunity for networking and relationship building with new and existing customers to ensure the brand is meeting customer needs. These are just some of the ways many businesses today are mastering the brand experience and ensuring a positive branding image works for them.

Here at Streng Agency, we have helped many clients with their marketing goals and have helped make marketing for the brand experience something that can be easily attained. Ultimately, the goal is to offer something that is memorable and outside of the range of the normal consumer experience. This is critical to business success because brands are built on physical and mental needs and the ability of the brand to meet those needs. We can help with every step of this process!

Totality of the Brand Experience

A key aspect of crafting a strong brand experience for your customers and potential customers involves being totally available and totally meeting the wants and needs of your target audience. Totality is about being complete in your services and totally immersive in your message across all of your various marketing elements. If the experience isn’t complete in meeting your customer’s needs and if it isn’t consistent every time they come to you to do business then the totality will not be there and your brand will struggle with creating customer loyalty. “Consistency is important so that your customers know what your brand is going to deliver each and every time. For example, if you’re a travel agent specializing in helping singles book group excursions, you need to make sure you have a total brand experience that relates to your specific customer. Having a local office with beautiful brochures may be a good start, but without an online experience that appeals to the social nature of your customer, your brand won’t be complete or consistent with your customers’ needs” (Entrepreneur.com).

A large part of the experiences customers have with your brand are wrapped up in how they feel during the entire process from start to finish and how you as a business and brand respond to feedback, ideas, complaints, and customer reviews. You need the totality of your brand experience to create brand loyalty; remember, that even if things go wrong, a customer can still have a good view of your brand and may even come back and do business with you again if you handled the issue and dealt with them in a professional manner. This includes engaging with your customers within the channels they normally use – whether that is traditional media, social media, web content, mobile apps, or TV and radio advertisements.

Tonality of the Brand Experience

The process of mastering the brand experience also heavily relies on the tone of voice your brand takes in its communications with customers. Known as tonality, this is key to mastering the process of marketing for the brand experience and it is all about the spirit of the experience. It needs to align with how you define your brand and demonstrate that you know what your customers want and need. If the tonality is at odds with your marketing, then the message will be blurred, muddied, or lost and your target audience will not feel the connection you want. Sometimes this tonality is also referred to as brand personality or voice.

For example, a restaurant may have a wonderful online presence that gives the air of a luxury restaurant, but when people go there if the staff are rude, the place is dirty, and the food is sub-par then the message is lost and customers will form a negative idea of the brand and the business. Likewise, the tone you use has to match up with your audience. You would not use the same tonality when talking to senior citizens as you would if your target audience is millennials and younger adults. “For an effective brand experience, you need totality and tonality working together to give a complete picture of what your brand can offer. Both elements need to be consistent with each interaction. As soon as one element of your marketing falls out of step with the rest, you put the brand in jeopardy with your customers” (Entrepreneur.com). It is essential that you execute your marketing plan consistently in both totality and tonality in order to have a winning formula that wins brand loyalty and support from your customer base.

Ask Yourself, What is Your Brand Experience?

When it comes to developing a marketing plan for your brand there is a lot that goes into mastering the brand experience and being successful in both short-term and long-term marketing goals. If you have questions about how to make the most of marketing for the brand experience, you have come to the right place! We here at Streng Agency have decades of experience and have helped many businesses and brands, large and small, develop the branding goals that fit their unique business plans and have helped them maximize their brand presence and customer experience. We are here for you and are ready to put our knowledge and experience to work for you – so call today and let’s get together and help you discover the difference we can make for your brand! There is a lot that goes into marketing for the brand experience and we are ready to help you through the process of mastering the brand experience as it applies to your business. Take the first step today and make the call to Streng Agency!